A More Merciful God

Jude 13 …and also Jesus’ references to “outer darkness” in Matthew

Jude 13 (Speaking of false teachers and those who blaspheme the things of God that they don’t understand)  “[They are] raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.”

I’m not going to say much about this because I don’t think there is much to say. Traditionalist writer Robert Peterson spends a lot of time creating “meaning” for this verse, but to me, if you had to describe the nothingness of non-existence that false teachers, blasphemers (and other non-believers) are ultimately destined for, the “blackness of darkness forever” seems like as good a description as anything. And it certainly doesn’t line up with the literal traditionalist teaching that the lost will be forever floating and gurgling in a Lake of Fire. Now, traditionalists who believe that all of the fire language is just figurative for an eternal separation from God could claim that this “description of hell” is accurate and lines up with the “separation theory”, but they would first have to prove that the Bible teaches the separation theory – that the lost will be immortal, always in existence, but merely without the presence of God; but I believe this will never be found in Scripture. So I think that the “blackness of darkness forever” simply means nothingness, and non-existence, the same thing that we looked at in the Jude 7 summary above this one in the list.

Peterson tries to legitimize the concept of a figuratively dark hell by pointing out that Jesus too warned of coming darkness. Here are a couple of those passages:

Mat 8:8 The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.

Mat 8:9 For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

Mat 8:10 When Jesus heard it, he marveled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

Mat 8:11 And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.

Mat 8:12 But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And…

Mat 22:12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.

Mat 22:13 Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

From the commentaries I’ve read, Matthew contains certain portions that are directly tied to Jewish custom, and are written from that perspective, plain and simple. Not that there isn’t a lot of information there for the church as well, but certain parts of Matthew need to be considered in the context of being written specifically to the Jews, or at least considered with the flavor of Jewish tradition, in order to catch the fuller meaning. I was reminded of this as I listened to an old MP3 of prophecy expert Jimmy DeYoung the other day where he commented on a few places in Matthew that have nothing to do with Gentiles at all, according to his study. And it is interesting that there is no other reference in the other three gospels, or actually in the whole Bible to “outer darkness” besides the ones that Jesus makes in the book of Matthew. So that’s the first thing to keep in mind regarding these passages.

18^th Century theologian John Gill, even though he actually held a traditional view of eternal hell, didn’t believe these verses were a literal description of hell either, but rather a picture of the rejection of the Jews who wouldn’t accept Christ, and I think he makes a lot of sense. Here is what he wrote:

“The allusion in the text is, to the customs of the ancients at their feasts and entertainments; which were commonly made in the evening, when the hall or dining room, in which they sat down, was very much illuminated with lamps and torches; but without in the streets, were entire darkness: and where were heard nothing but the cries of the poor, for something to be given them, and of the persons that were turned out as unworthy guests;”

If you look at the context of the verses, it seems that Jesus is letting these Jews know that while they very much believe themselves to be justified and right before God, and to be worthy guests, they are actually the very ones who will be rejected and will not enter the kingdom because they are rejecting the Messiah who they’ve been expecting. He even says in 8:12 that it is the children of the kingdom(the Jews) that will be cast out into outer darkness, whereas, in 8:11, He told them that others (Gentiles) from all over would be the ones who actually enter the kingdom of heaven. And Matthew 22:15 confirms that Jesus was speaking this against the unbelieving Jews, and in their presence. As far as the weeping and gnashing of teeth, I used the KJV above because it is one of the few versions that actually leaves the “where” out of the phrase. Most versions read something like, “…will be cast into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”, but the “where” is not in the original Greek, and separating this into two separate statements like the KJV does is probably most accurate. It’s not totally out of place to phrase it in the way other versions do, but if we’re going to insert something that isn’t really there, I think that it is more of a “when” than a “where”. When the unbelieving Jews(and I suppose all others who have rejected God) realize that they have been wrong, that they have rejected their Messiah, and that they’ve been rejected from the kingdom of God, they will weep and gnash their teeth. This may happen at that initial moment of realization, or go on constantly or sporadically during the entire time that the lost are in Hades awaiting judgment, or it may happen at final judgment too (or perhaps only at final judgment), but there is no reason, based on these verses, to teach that the lost will spend eternity weeping and gnashing their teeth.  In fact, Psalm 112:10 ties the wicked’s gnashing of teeth to the next event, their perishing:  Here’s what it says: “The wicked shall see and be vexed; he will gnash his teeth and melt away; the desire of the wicked shall perish.”  So overall, the prior verses do nothing in the way of supporting the idea of eternal suffering, even though they are used for such all the time. I need to note that the Jewish people are still God’s people. And any Jew that turns to Christ will be saved. These passages do not indicate a sweeping rejection of all Jews…just those who reject their own Jewish Messiah as most of the Jews of Jesus’ time were, and that’s why Jesus contrasted “all Israel” with this Gentile who demonstrated great faith.

Whether the darkness in these verses is figurative of rejection from the Kingdom, or a description of loss of being and existence (or both), none of these passages add weight to the eternal torment of the lost doctrine. And it’s my hope and prayer that the doctrine will be abandoned by the Church and we’ll begin teaching the merciful God of Scripture.

God Bless!

Matthew 18: 7-9

Mat 18:7 “Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes!

Mat 18:8 And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire.

Mat 18:9 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell(Gehenna) of fire.

The traditionalist, with the preconceived notion that all human souls are immortal and indestructible from conception, will naturally assume that since the lost are cast into a fire, they must therefore exist in that fire for all eternity. If the Bible anywhere taught that we are immortal without salvation, then I would have to agree(and I wouldn’t be writing a book about hell). But this is not taught, and just the opposite is very clearly taught, and I’ve devoted two whole chapters to this issue alone in the book because this is critical to understanding all of the “fire” passages, so that we don’t make the historical mistake of somehow thinking that the lost will be able to endure the consuming wrath of God and survive because they’ve been endowed with an “asbestos body”, as many preachers claim. If we just look at the plain language of the passage, and don’t read anything into it, we’ll see that the Lord doesn’t say anything about eternal conscious suffering, but only that it would be better to enter into life, even maimed(and of course even here He was speaking figuratively, and likely not suggesting people sever and gouge out body parts), than to be cast into the fire, which he indicated in other scriptures would fully destroy(apollumi) both the body and the soul – death – so again we have the contrast of life and death. I’ve often heard traditionalist preachers, like Robert Jeffress, maintain that simply losing one’s life at final judgment isn’t a harsh enough penalty for rejecting salvation.  I don’t think Jeffress realizes how hard he just smacked God in the face with that statement.  God’s wisdom is so far above ours, and His knowledge of what’s in store in eternity obviously is as well, since we haven’t seen it yet.  Missing out on eternal life with God, and instead being destroyed out of existence, is the absolutely highest and harshest punishment that could be meted out, without crossing over the line to cruel and unusual (and unnecessary) punishment, which is what tradition accuses God of. 

And let’s look at the word translated as “hell” in this passage.  It’s “Gehenna”, and as we’ve looked at in other places, it’s a reference to the Valley of Hinnom, where a couple things have happened.  One, God’s people had gone astray in the past and were sacrificing their children to the false god Molech there, by fire.  Not good.   And that’s the first picture of death and destruction by fire that is associated with that valley.   But from every source I’ve ever seen (except one), it is claimed that in Jesus’ day, that valley was used as a place to burn refuse(what little they created in a pre-industrial society), waste matter, and dead bodies, of animals, and I suppose possibly humans as well, maybe those who society didn’t believe worthy of burial??  And it’s said that the fires were kept burning constantly.  The traditionalist gravitates to that “burning constantly” part and tries to make a correlation there to the eternality of suffering that they believe await the lost.  But what I’ve noticed in life is that everything I’ve ever thrown in a fire eventually burned up.  Fire is a picture of destruction, and only the saved survive it (like Daniel’s three friends in the fiery furnace). 

I’ve looked up pictures of that valley to see what it looks like now, and it’s a lush beautiful place.  In fact, on my first website I created to deal with this issue, I had a picture of that valley, and one day my (then) 3 year old daughter was sitting next to me while I was writing, and I asked her what that picture looked like to her.  She answered back in her little 3 year old poor grammer, “It look like Heaven”.  That’s the last answer I was expecting, but I found it fascinating.  And even that valley’s current beauty, after such an ugly history, to me, is a picture of how one day evil will be gone, altogether…not still in existence and only removed from God’s presence.  Now don’t get me wrong….That valley may open up again one day and become something ugly.  There is biblical evidence that this could even be the portal to the lake of fire.  I’m not saying I necessarily believe this.  I don’t know what the lake of fire is…Is it like a fiery black hole?  Or does the earth open up and become a lake of fire at the end of the 1000 year reign of Christ as some believe?  We are in fact getting a whole new heavens and earth at that point, so we’re not going to need this place anymore.  Well, I simply don’t know what the Lake of Fire is, or what it takes to destroy a human or angelic soul.  That’s God’s business.  But I do like the picture that the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna-Hell) offers right now, in that what was once a place of death and fire, is now a beautiful green valley.  I think it’s a picture of how things will one day be, after every tear has been wiped away and we are in the fullness of God’s joy continuously.

This passage is one of the most relied upon by traditionalists as evidence of a conscious afterlife of torment for the lost, and it very well may be evidence of a time of consciousness after physical death. However, most preachers and bible teachers that I hear comment on this passage go on to use it as evidence of the eternal state of consciousness that they teach the unsaved will endure. I’ve studied this section of Scripture extensively, and while I have a lot of thoughts and opinions on it, I’ve come to only a couple of absolute conclusions about it. And one thing I am absolutely sure of is that this passage is not a picture of an eternal conscious state of damnation of those who reject salvation. In the full book that I’m writing on this topic, I went through this passage forwards and backwards, looking at every different aspect of it, giving multiple evidences as to why this isn’t intended to be an accurate literal picture of the eternal state of the lost, and I also shared the various positions that people take on the passage. For this blog version, I’m downsizing it considerably.

Let’s first look at the flame that the rich man says he is tormented in. When I used to teach 1^st and 2^nd grade Sunday School, I remember one time that the children’s takehome pages had a picture of the rich man from this passage engulfed in flames, up to his elbows. Yeah, those papers went in the trash that day. A person in that situation, literally on fire, would probably do a number of things differently than what we read of this man doing, in Scripture. He probably would have asked for buckets of water to be cast on him, not a drop of water…and not for his tongue. But something else that I noticed and spent a lot of time on in the full version of this was that he says he is tormented by “this flame” – singular. While some versions of the bible may say “this fire” or “these flames”, that’s not how the original Greek reads, and while I’m not crazy about the old English of the KJV, it is probably the most overall accurate translation, and it’s clear that this is a singular flame this man says he is being tormented by. So I looked around Scripture (electronically searching with e-Sword), and sure enough, there were other Greek words that would have been used if “this fire” (meaning multiple flames, as fire normally exists) is what was intended. I also looked at every place in Scripture where this Greek word phlox (Strong’s coded word G5395) was used, which is the word used here in this passage that is correctly translated as a singular “flame” in the KJV- and I found something really interesting. This word is used in only 7 verses in the New Testament (always in the singular) first here in Luke 16, and then in all six of the other passages, it is a direct reference to God Himself or an angel. Here are those other six references:

The next one is in Acts 7:30, but it’s a reference back to the Old Testament where it says an angel of the Lord appeared as a flame of fire to Moses in a bush. The third time is in 2 Thessalonians 1:7-8 where it is Jesus Christ Himself at His second coming. The fourth is in Hebrews 1:7 where we read that God makes his angels and ministers as “a flame of fire”. And remember how the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost? It was as single flames over the heads of the believers. This single flame represents God himself, or at least his unveiled reality, and this is what is tormenting this man, not a literal fire, or we’d have seen other words used to describe it, and likely different requests from a man on fire. The tongue causes a lot of trouble. I know mine has. And this is part of this man’s problem. He is asking for one drop of water for his tongue (as if that could help a man on fire), and he’s a man who has probably used his own tongue to speak ill of Lazarus numerous times, as he was laid at his gate. It’s his way of saying, “I was wrong, and Lazarus is more righteous than I.” But the point of it all is that it’s too late to right the wrongs after physical death. Another contrast could be made between his wicked tongue (which James says can set a whole forest ablaze), and the singular tongue of fire of truth that is tormenting him (mentally tormenting him….not physically).

The fifth, sixth, and seventh times we see this singular flame in Scripture is in Revelation 1:14, Revelation 2:18 and Revelation 19:12, and in all three it is the description of the pure eyes of Christ. Not much commentary needed there. Again, it’s about the fact that after this life, all truth will become evident, and everything will become very real, and there will be no excuses, no second chances. It’s a powerful lesson, that the mainstream church has somehow, against all biblical reason, twisted into a teaching that God is going to torment those who rejected salvation for all eternity.

There’s a lot more I could get into with this passage. And if I ever finish the book I’m writing on this, it will be included in that, but the one point I really want to address in this blog version is that even if this were a 100% literal picture of what happens in Hades immediately after death, it would still add no weight to the argument that the lost will suffer throughout eternity. Scripture maintains that one day, even Death and Hades (where this scene is taking places) will be cast into the Lake of Fire, which is called the “second death”. This Luke 16 passage is at best a picture of what happens immediately after physical death, which is not the same thing as when those in Hades are one day raised to be judged at the “great white throne”, which will end with them being cast into the Lake of Fire, and the end of their very existence, from everything I’ve read in Scripture. But again, I think we may be seeing what would be said, if anything could be said. I’m not in charge, and certainly God will do what God will do, but it also seems unlikely that Abraham is going to be the go-between who is communicating for those who end up on one side of the chasm or the other. In fact, think about this – The only people who would have called him Father Abraham would be Jews, or Christians. Christians have Abraham as our father in the sense that he’s the father of the faith. And Jews have him as their father in terms of genealogy. So where does that leave the unsaved Gentile who is reading this passage? They don’t even see themselves represented here. I think Christians need to step back from Luke 16, and come at it with some fresh thoughts that actually make sense. I don’t mean to come across ugly, but time is getting short, and it’s time to get to know God better, and we’ll do that if we throw off some of these lies about Him.

Concerning conscious suffering immediately after death: People who believe as I do, that immortality is a gift only given to those who exercise faith in the One True Living God, are often called “conditionalists”, because we believe immortality, the opportunity to go on living forever, is “conditional”, based upon placing your faith in Christ and enduring to the end. But that doesn’t mean we believe that unbelievers just go POOF and disappear when they physically die. Now, some conditionalist Christians do in fact mistakenly believe that. But please don’t mix that up with anything I’m trying to get across. And also, I try not to identify with that label of conditionalist at all, because most of them believe in total soul sleep for the lost, from the time of physical death, to the time of the white throne judgment, and I disagree slightly with that. Many conditionalists also believe in soul sleep for even the saved, from the time of their physical death until when they are raised to life, and I’m not totally on board with that either.  It’s a complicated issue. And I’m not dogmatic about many of the issues regarding this intermediate state because I’ve seen biblical evidence for soul sleep, as well as for consciousness. That being the case, would it be entirely impossible for both to happen? Maybe it’s not either/or, but both …so maybe a saved person dies, and Jesus is there waiting for them to welcome them home (like how Stephen saw heaven open and Jesus standing there while he was about to be stoned to death), but there’s really not a job to do yet, with the next thing on the schedule being the rapture/redemption, then the marriage supper of the lamb, and then our return with Him to reign on earth for a millenium. (Jesus said that He’s going to prepare a place for us, but He didn’t say that as we die off, we join the construction team…maybe we do, but you can’t support it with Scripture) So maybe after that initial welcome, we’re put in a state of sleep until the redemption?? Just a thought. I obviously haven’t been there to see this. But there is evidence for both sleep and also awareness after death in Scripture, prior to resurrection, so it seems like at least a decent possibility. Another thing that complicates it a little is that for saved believers, something different likely happens now, than before Christ’ death and resurrection. When Christ died, the veil in the temple was torn. I believe this literally happened, but it’s also likely symbolic that now there is access to heaven that wasn’t there before that. That’s why Paul, in the New Testament spoke of dying and going to be with Christ, but David and Job, from the Old Testament, both spoke/wrote of going to hell (Sheol), instead of going to be with the Lord. They didn’t write or speak as if they believed they would be conscious there, but it did sound as if they knew they’d be redeemed from it one day. (and even though it’s in the New Testament, when Jesus is telling this story of Lazarus and the rich man, He hasn’t died or resurrected yet, so Old Testament rules still apply, in terms of all people going to Hades/Sheol, but the lost are potentially in torment, while the saved are either in bliss, at rest, or asleep (or have a moment of bliss, followed by restful sleep…we simply don’t know) I don’t think Scripture is extremely clear on this intermediate state between physical death and being raised to life (for those who are saved) or to final judgment(for the lost), so I’m not making a statement of faith or fact here…just my gut feeling, but just as I believe that the thief on the cross was going to be with Christ in paradise “on that same day” as Jesus told him he would, I believe it’s likely the lost are going to have a conscious revelation on the same day they die (somewhat like the rich man in this story did), and it will be the result of that “glass dimly” sort of vision we have now being melted away by the reality of the undeniable flame of Truth, the One that tormented the man. But just as I wonder if the saved will remain aware for that entire time, or after an initial welcome, will they be put into a sleep/rest (oh, and isn’t that in Scripture, that we “enter His rest”? I should look that up, but I’ll let someone else take that one) ….so just as I think that’s a possibility, I think it’s also possible that the lost, after the initial realization of what they’ve forfeited, they may also be mercifully put to sleep until they are resurrected to the Lake of Fire judgment at the end of the millennial reign of Christ. God is merciful. He wants the lost to know how they’ve offended the Holy Spirit in their rejection of His drawing them, but does that require hundreds or thousands of years of conscious torment (depending on when one died) to remain aware and awake on what is essentially “death row”? Even death row inmates get to sleep part of the time. God is God. His rules. His way. He can require their consciousness for that entire time if He desires to, and perhaps that’s exactly how the process works. My sense is that He does not allow lengthy punishment that has no redeeming value, but even if He does, hundreds, or even a couple thousand years of mental torment, is less than a drop in the bucket of timelessness, and as stiff a penalty as it may be, if in fact that’s how it works, it’s still a vapor of time compared to eternity. In fact, no amount of finite time, even 10,000 years, can be reasonable compared to eternity, because here’s the thing with eternity…For instance, a person who never found and grabbed hold of grace is in hell, in torment, floating around the lake of fire(as many traditionalists teach), and they do that for a billions years…Ok, well that was just day one, essentially. Time to begin a second billion years on “day two”, and there’s going to be no end to those days…. I really don’t think we understand the level of suffering we’re accusing God of allowing when we teach that He is going to allow the eternal conscious suffering of potentially billions of human souls throughout all eternity. Fortunately, while Scripture isn’t crystal clear about the intermediate state of judgment, it is very clear that immortality, and going on living forever, which are made possible only by avoiding the “second death” – that these are all things that are for the saved only. The lost will not suffer into and throughout eternity. That’s a huge relief to me, on so many levels, but primarily because of what it says about God’s merciful nature and character. He’s a harsh judge, but not a maniac whose thirst for His enemies’ demise is unquenchable. His judgment will be satisfied when those who rejected Him are destroyed and returned to the state of their non-existence where they began before He graciously gave them life, to begin with. And that brings up one last point to ponder, for the blog version of this passage: Because traditionalists can’t find direct statements of eternal conscious suffering in Scripture, yet they desire so badly to hang onto this “tradition of men” (Paul and Jesus both warned against those) they’ve created several arguments from so-called reason. Here’s one of them. “God is an infinite being. Therefore judgment against those who reject Him must go on for infinite time”. Not in the bible at all. And what I hear in between the lines when someone puts that forward is “God’s judgment will never be fully completed, and His purposes in final judgment, not really final, since the process goes on into eternity.” Does that sound like God? Isn’t he a finisher? He’s just gonna annex insubordination and evil, and not eradicate it? Here’s the scriptural truth: The lost will perish (Just check John 3:16). And nothing perishes forever. Anything perishing ultimately comes to nothing. And that’s where those who reject Christ will end up. It’s tough, but it’s merciful. God Bless.

Jude 1:6 And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—

Jude 1:7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

This is another of the ten passages of Scripture that Robert Peterson, the most outspoken and most prolific writer of traditional eternal hell literature, believes most solidifies the traditional view that the lost will be conscious and in torment for all eternity. I think this verse, maybe more than any of the other nine, does the exact opposite. Sodom and Gomorrah were completely obliterated – so much so that even among archaeologists, there is a lot of disagreement over where they even were. There is nothing left. And this passage, as well as 2 Peter 2:6 tell us that what happened to these cities is an example of what will ultimately happen to unbelieving sinners who won’t put their faith in Christ. Take a look at how clearly Peter puts it:

2 Peter 2:6 (English Standard Version) ….turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly;

I’m not sure this could be put any more plain, except maybe how King David phrased something similar in the Psalms:

Psa 37:8 Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.

Psa 37:9 For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land.

Psa 37:10 In just a little while, the wicked will be no more; though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there.

Psa 37:11 But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace.

Psa 37:12 The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him,

Psa 37:13 but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming.

Most notable is a Hebrew word in verse 10. It’s the word that is being translated as “will be no more” referring to the wicked. It’s the word ayin and according to Strong’s Concordance it means, “to be nothing”, “not exist”, or “non-entity” …which is exactly what these two New Testament passages above confirm (and also what is stated will happen to the lost throughout Scripture). A traditionalist might argue that David was only speaking of the earthly demise of the wicked, not their demise at final judgment. But that doesn’t line up with surrounding verses that sound a lot like what Jesus would say hundreds of years later about the meek inheriting the earth, which happens after this present evil age. It also wouldn’t line up with many other themes in the Psalms where it speaks of how well off the wicked are in this life, while those faithful to God seem to be suffering. Read Psalm 73 some time.

I’ve written it over and over throughout this blog and also in the full book I’m working on, but if eternal torment were the punishment for unbelief, that would have been clearly stated somewhere in Scripture, and wouldn’t be something that has to be painfully dug out, while ignoring clear passages like these above that say that the end game punishment for faithlessness is to lose your very life and existence. Jesus asked in Mark 8:36 What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and then lose his own soul? We are our soul. Losing it means losing our very existence. And contrary to many traditionalists who find this to be a soft punishment for unbelief, (which I can’t help thinking must be offensive to a God who thinks very highly of the offer of eternal life that He’s made) it is actually the just punishment for denying God, seeing that He is really just giving people back to the nothingness that they were before He created them.

But the one word that hangs traditionalists up in this Jude passage, and other places in Scripture is the word that is almost always translated as “everlasting” or “eternal”. And in the passage we began with, Jude 7, it is fire that is being defined as everlasting. The Greek word being translated as “everlasting” is aionios and after studying it to death years ago in all the various contexts that it appears in Scripture, I found that it most often carries the feeling of “permanent in effect”, not necessarily something that continues to occur throughout eternity. (This blog isn’t the place to go into that study, but the book version of this study will have all of those details.) And that is exactly what the fires with which God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah did: obliterated them forever, and it is also what the Lake of Fire is intended to do at final judgment, which makes sense since Jude and Peter both said Sodom’s destruction happened as an example of what ultimately happens to unbelievers. Being cast into the Lake of Fire at judgment is called “the second death” in Revelation 20:14. The first death is that of the body, and the second is that of the soul, our very being and essence.

At the risk of being overly repetitive, since I know I’ve mentioned it more than once on this site, I’ve got to ask the simple question: What does fire do? It’s common knowledge that it burns stuff up, plain and simple. And that’s why it is used as the image of what will happen to the unfaithful throughout Scripture. If you’ll think about it throughout Scripture, the only ones who survive fire are the faithful. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were cast in a furnace and survived it, while those who cast them in were killed by the same heat. I can’t think of any other fire in the bible that didn’t burn something up except for a bush that God inhabited, when He first spoke to Moses. So in Jude 7 and 2 Peter 2:6 we have a fire that causes the permanent condition of extinction, according to the plain language of the passage, and according to a deeper study of the word being translated as “everlasting”, and it is then plainly stated that this was done as an example. God will punish faithlessness, and it will in fact be an “eternal punishment” as the bible states more than once, an eternal death from which there is no return. But ultimately God is merciful, and taking people who reject Him out of existence, sad as it is, is far more merciful than letting them exist in torment for all eternity, pointlessly, as if He gains anything from their torment. I’ve heard and read many weak arguments by traditionalists for why this is “necessary” and they all fall short of biblical accuracy. You may have heard this one: God is an eternal being, and faithlessness offends Him, so the punishment must last as long as He exists: Not in the bible…Just a weak human argument, trying to justify something that isn’t justifiable and isn’t in Scripture. And there are many more like this. The full book on this matter will address a number of them.

I hope this study helps you draw closer to God than you ever have as you discover just how much more merciful He is than how He has been portrayed for centuries.

God Bless!

2 Thessalonians 1:5 This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering—

2 Th 1:6 since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you,

2 Th 1:7 and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels

2 Th 1:8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

2 Th 1:9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,

2 Th 1:10 when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

Amazingly, this passage, and specifically verse 9, is one of the most relied upon verses in the defense of the traditional view of eternal torment. And just as amazingly, of all of Paul’s writings, it is the only verse he wrote that is claimed by traditionalists to specifically support the theory of eternal conscious punishment. It actually does no such thing. The book version(still a rough draft) of my assessment of this passage is lengthy and detailed, but for this blog version I’m going to try to hit just the highlights: We’ll look briefly at the background of why Paul is writing this second letter to the Thessalonians. We’ll also see that there are a number of ways that the Greek word aionios, here translated as “eternal”, is used in Scripture, sometimes not at all referring to something that will extend into timelessness. There’s also another Greek word in this verse that is being translated poorly and I’ll get into the details of that a little. And then there’s something that’s so obvious, that it is somehow just overlooked by those who force this verse to be a prediction of an eternal process of destruction that never ends, and occurs “away from” the Lord. So I’ll begin there. It’s that this verse is not a picture of eternal destinies at all. It is describing an earthly event, the second coming of Jesus Christ to earth, which will begin His millennial reign. If you’ve read other things I’ve written, this will probably be repetitive, but timeless eternity begins after Jesus has reigned on earth for 1000 years. The unsaved lost, those who rejected salvation during their earthly life, are still in Hades(Hell) awaiting final judgment during those thousand years. Contrary to what many other non-traditionalists believe, I see biblical evidence that they may experience conscious torment during that 1000 years (as well as during the time between their physical death and the beginning of that thousand years). Whether they are conscious for that entire time period I believe is very much up for some debate, but either way, they are still in existence in some form, and this existence precedes final judgment. I hope you’ve been able to click on the “The Garden of Eden” tab above and read through that. There I explain how the “eternal conscious separation from God” theory has become the bedrock of the traditionalist view on eternal conscious torment, and how Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden has been erroneously used as the ground zero evidence for that doctrine. And this verse in 2 Thessalonians is another that is misused to teach that same idea. It’s the phrase “away from the presence of the Lord” which the verse states is “where” the lost will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction. But I’m going to come back to that thought, because I think it’s important to first understand the various uses of aionios (eternal) in the Bible. As I wrote above, the full version of this is extensive, and gives all the references for what I claim. But in this blog, I’m just going to state the facts, and the reader can look into Scripture for themselves, or wait for the book to be finished to verify it. And this may seem like splitting hairs, but there are places in Scripture where the Greek word being translated into English as “eternal” and “everlasting”, clearly means “permanent in effect”. It would make this longer than I want it to be to defend that here, but it’s a biblical fact. So let’s first just note that this “eternal destruction” spoken of in the verse at least could be a statement that those who are afflicting the Thessalonian Christians will simply be permanently “done for”. It seems this is verified in verse 8 of the following chapter where Paul is talking about the “lawless one…whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming” (italics for emphasis). There’s much more to say on this, but that lays the groundwork at least.

Let’s look at another Greek word in this verse that seems to be getting a poor translation into at least modern day bibles. First, it’s notable that verse 9 is an awkward way to structure a sentence that is supposed to be telling us where something will happen, where it says they will be “destroyed away from the presence of the Lord….” It’s strange to think of something being destroyed “away from” something. It reads poorly, and if the idea of separation were intended, there’s any number of ways this could have been worded more clearly. But there’s a reason that it doesn’t read well, and it’s because it’s the wrong translation of the Greek. The Greek word that is being translated as “away from”, as well as “shut out from” in other versions, is apo, and it can have a number of meanings. But if you’ll check your Strong’s Concordance, you’ll see that “because of” and “from” (as in ‘due to’) are also in the list of possible translations. Let’s plug that in. Here’s 2 Thessalonians 1:9-10:

“They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, because of the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.”

That makes a whole lot more sense, and it also lines up with what we noted above where Paul says in chapter 2 verse 8 that the lawless one would be “brought to nothing by the appearance of his coming.” There’s two more things to note about this poor translation of apo in this verse: First, this word appears 649 times in Scripture, and this is literally the only place where that one Greek word alone is translated as “away from”. And in a search of the King James bible, I found that the places where the phrase “away from” appeared, and where the Greek word apo was being translated as “from”, the word “away” was being translated from its own Greek word. In those cases it is a 2-word phrase in Greek being translated into a 2-word phrase in English. The one time in Scripture where the single Greek word apo is translated into the 2-word phrase of “away from” is here in 1 Thessalonians, so it is certainly unprecedented, and uncalled for, and is the result of interpreters and translators forcing their doctrine into the translation rather than translating it most clearly and in congruence with the overall context of the verse. I appreciated the footnote in the Crossway English Standard Version.   They noted that it could also be translated as a destruction “that comes from the presence of the Lord”. In other words, it’s because of His presence that they are destroyed. He is a consuming fire after all. And this isn’t the only place in Scripture that we’re told He is returning in fire to destroy His enemies who are on the earth at the time of His coming. Last thing about apo and this whole phrase and its translation. The exact same series of Greek words that make up the phrase “from the presence of the Lord” (Strong’s coded numbers: 575, 4383, 3588, 2962) is only used in one other place in the entire Bible, and there the Greek word apo being translated as “from” clearly means “because of” or “as a result of”. It is in Acts 3:19: “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord”. If we plugged in “shut out from” or “away from” here, as it was over-interpreted in 2 Thessalonians, it would lose all meaning and make no sense. And this verse certainly does not imply a separation from His presence, but clearly we have a contrast between what the presence of the Lord does to the faithful and what effect it has on those who persecute the faithful. It is a refreshing comfort to believers, but it consumes the unbelievers. Even just a few verses later in 2 Thessalonians 2:8 Paul writes that the lawless one will be destroyed “by the brightness of His (Christ’) Presence”.  Well I could go on, and in the book, I do, but that’s enough for the purposes of this blog. The next verse in the list of the top ten traditionalists proof texts that we’ll analyze analyze is Revelation 14:10, and we’ll see that it is once again speaking of this earthly event of Christ’ second coming, and not giving us a picture of the eternal destiny of the lost. There is much evidence for what I claim. Please click on it and continue on with this study.

…and not just because I don’t want to.  I studied the topic for several months from a strictly biblical standpoint, and have continued to study it steadily but less intensely over the last 9 years.

The thought of eternal hell always troubled me, but not in the way its proclamation is intended too…in the “Well, I certainly don’t want to go there. Please tell me how I can avoid that” kind of way.  But more in what it says about the God we’re to love with all our heart, soul, and mind, that He would consign masses of people who never asked to be born to conscious misery (and physical torture, according to many) for all eternity. I confess it – That seriously disturbed me for a long time, but I believed it, because I assumed the people teaching this had done the research.  I had no idea of the vast amount of biblical evidence to the contrary.

I don’t belong to a cult or any fringe sect of Christianity. I’m a fairly run-of-the-mill Christian, having attending a non-denominational Bible church for over a decade, and now attending a Baptist church for over the past year, both that constitutionally holds to a belief in hell, that to me at least, is disturbing, and virtually non-existent scripturally, as I’ve come to believe through study.  I should note that I absolutely love the church we now attend, and disagreeing on this issue is no reason not to worship and serve with others who happen to disagree on this.

But I’m not a Universalist.  Everyone will not be saved. In fact, Jesus seemed to make it clear that many more will be lost than will be saved. For those who will be lost, the bible states that there is a judgment day that occurs 1000 years after Christ has returned and reigned bodily on earth, and at that time of judgment, those who failed to put their faith in the one true living God will be raised to stand judgment, be found guilty of rejecting salvation, and be fully destroyed, body and soul. Based on Scripture, I don’t believe they will exist in any form after this point. They will not be suffering consciously for all eternity. To state it very simply, Before we were, we weren’t. There was a time we didn’t exist. God brings us into existence (an awesome gift), and then offers the opportunity to go on living forever at peace with our Maker, in timeless eternity (an unspeakably awesome gift). If we reject that, we’re essentially given back to what we were before God made us…we no longer exist. This second death is no soft punishment, but it’s the just punishment for unbelief. And it’s harsh and permanent(and yes, it is an “eternal punishment”), yet merciful at the same time, because the suffering of those who failed to find or accept grace does in fact have an end. (a quick sidenote: The time period between physical death and final punishment is much more of a gray area. There is scriptural evidence that the lost will experience conscious suffering during some or all of that time.  So I don’t reject the truth of Hell as a reality – I reject the doctrine of eternal conscious torment, and the belief that human life continues after the second death in the lake of fire.  There is much disagreement, even among traditionalists, about what happens during this intermediate state, and it’s addressed in the study, but is not the primary focus.

If you’ve been a Christian long, then you may be calling back to memory a few verses that you believe would prove something much different than what I’ve stated. I’m  aware of those verses, having studied them quite a bit, and yet maintain a belief that a total cessation of life, not a tormented eternity, is the final punishment for unbelief in Christ. This isn’t the place for any details on that. That’s what the book and the website are dedicated to. But I welcome questions and challenges.

I’m not going to go on and on about this here, but I feel the need to say at this point, I have a great deal of respect for numerous pastors and Christian leaders who I happen to disagree with on the issue of eternal suffering and human immortality.  I don’t take it lightly, and it’s very uncomfortable to challenge those who have spoken into my life in many ways over the last 15 years that I’ve been seriously pursuing God, but from everything I’ve learned in doing this study, the challenge is needed. I don’t mean to undermine anyone’s ministry, and the concern that I might is one of the major factors in why I’ve stalled so long on finishing the book or moving to promote the website and this blog. I could name a few unknown, and at least 20 well-known pastors or teachers who I continue to listen to and learn from daily or weekly, all of whom I respectfully disagree with on the matters of human souls being innately immortal, and hell being unending and timeless in nature.

I’ve also come to have a great deal of respect for those for whom this is not an issue at all.  There’s not a thing wrong with trusting in God’s sovereignty in judgment, and trusting that if it means eternal conscious torment, and if that’s what it takes to satisfy God’s requirements, then that’s just what it takes.  That’s where most Christians are, and if one has never done a detailed study of judgment, there’s no reason to challenge the tradition that’s been handed down.  I never even thought about questioning the doctrine.  I was told by the pastors I was under all my life that hell was eternal, and that was that, like it or not.  But it was in trying to answer a question for a friend I was witnessing to that launched me accidentally into the study, that ultimately forced me to change my view on judgment.  So I’m sharing what I’ve learned, and I hope it helps someone else.  It brought great relief to my heart and soul, and grew my love for God exponentially.

Ultimately Satan is behind all lies and confusion. And I don’t kid myself at all. Writing this material that implies that close to 100% of my fellow-Christians have been deceived or have believed incorrectly isn’t going to go over well with a great percentage of them. I’ve already gotten a taste of it, and I know what’s headed my way if I keep pursuing this. And I realize that in the eyes of most, I’ll be the one seen as the satanically deceived and confused one.  And that’s ok.  I’m fallible, and certainly not beyond erring.  So I’m prepared for criticism. But that’s why the study, and being willing to walk through it is so important. If it’s flawed, then the Holy Spirit will reveal that to you, and then I welcome any insight you gain. But if you don’t find the flaws you’re expecting, it may change completely how you see and feel about our merciful Creator, as it did me.

The purpose of the book and the website, are first to bring relief to Christians for whom the traditional view of hell has been a sticking point in their relationship with God or a hindrance to witnessing. It’s also an outreach to those who are rejecting the one true God because the traditional view of eternal conscious torment is repulsive to them. If you’re a person who has felt drawn to God, but who is denying Him because of doctrines like this, I hope the information I provide in the study will go a long way toward helping you make a decision for Christ.

A little background: After digging in deep to the subject of hell several years ago, and finding satisfying and biblical answers to my questions that virtually ruled out what I’d been taught my whole life…(that the lost will suffer endless torment, with the first billion years in tormenting skin-melting hell being just a drop in the eternal bucket), I was excited beyond belief, and I often studied and wrote into all hours of the night during those first few months. All my feelings toward God changed, knowing he wasn’t the maniacal soul tormenter that I’d been told of. I felt really good for the first time in a long time. And it wasn’t just the relief provided by the information I was finding, but it was realizing there was a real need here to get the information out, and that felt like a call or a purpose to me. I had always wanted to know what I was supposed to be doing with my life besides just the basic requirements of going back and forth to work to provide for my family, and this felt like the IT that I’d been searching for. I was on a cloud for a while, and began to share what I was finding, and ultimately shared it with the pastor of my church and other members of the church board that I subsequently stepped down from because my beliefs violated our church’s constitution. They were less excited. Ok, that’s an understatement. Some never responded. None responded positively. The only non-board member I shared it with left our church because the board didn’t remove me as a Sunday School teacher. And a co-worker believes I’m doing the work of the devil. I handled those things well early on, but the cloud went dark, and it began to weigh me down. The only early pastoral support was from a friend’s pastor. He read some of the study I printed off for him, met with me for 2 hours about it, and told me I had shown him something he hadn’t seen before, and said that he believed this study had the potential to help a lot of people. But the little encouragement I received wasn’t enough to overpower the negatives, and I began to doubt the study. So I went back through all the information, and read back through the books that others have written that support the traditional view of hell I disagree with (Hell Under Fire, Two Views of Hell, etc). And once again, I found the arguments for a traditional view of hell and human immortality to have a lot of problems, and I became confident once more that I had found truth in my own study of God’s word.

Next, although I was fully convinced, I simply began to doubt the importance of it. I thought, “Ok, even if it’s true that God isn’t causing or allowing the eternal torment of the lost, perhaps that threat has pulled more people to Christ than it has repulsed away from Christ”. And even today, I do wonder if that’s why God has allowed the doctrine to remain, if it is in fact incorrect. He does weave our errors into His ultimate plans. It’s His specialty. It’s mostly all He has to work with, being that we’re all sinners who make mistakes every day. But is there a point where it repulses more people than it draws? And if so, are we at that point?  Beyond the scriptural study, I read a lot about this topic on the internet, just to see how it affects people, and it’s not good.  People will leave their church, the mission field, and even their faith over this idea that God is consciously tormenting the lost for all eternity.

I’m going to be transparent here. Until just recently, the great feelings I had when I first began to discover the errors in the traditional view have never returned, except on fleeting little waves here and there. The last several years have been difficult on the spiritual level. Although I believe the study to be solid, and the evidence for a non-traditional view of final judgment overwhelming, I have existed in a cycle that takes me from one day, excited and ready to delve in and get the information out because “this needs to happen NOW”, to the next day, feeling like the scum of the earth because I’m at odds with Christian brothers and sisters everywhere…to then doubting the study…so then re-digging in and confirming what I know and not doubting the study…to again believing in the importance of the information…to then go on to feel like maybe it’s not all that important… and on and on the cycle goes. But the worst result is that for a long time I felt disconnected from other Christians because I know that my beliefs on this don’t line up with theirs. But the disconnection is less about the disagreement (we’re never going to agree on every issue of faith), but because I feel very strongly at times that it’s important to change what we, as the body of Christ, teach on this matter, and I know that it steps on the toes of people whose toes I don’t want to step on, when I move on this. Without wanting to or trying to, I’m inadvertently accusing Godly people of having been deceived and falling for Satanic lies, and I’m also implying that they’re continuing that work as well, in their own ministries. The very things that make me feel awful when it’s pointed at me, I’m doing to those I love, trust, and respect. So this has been beyond uncomfortable for years now, and that’s why this blog. I don’t know any other solution than to put the information out and see what the response is.  *But as I’m sitting here updating this 2013 post now in September of 2015, I can tell you that a whole new feeling of urgency has come over me with this.  I’m more in love with the Savior than I ever have been, and at the same time believe there is no better time to share this, and quit waffling on it and just stand firm for what I found Scripture to teach when I delved in and asked God for answers.  As the days grow darker, to anyone out there who is rejecting faith in God even partially because of the doctrine of eternal conscious torment, you can’t use that excuse any longer.  The bible simply doesn’t teach that and it’s easy to demonstrate this fact.  And to those who are Christians, but the closeness in your relationship to Christ has been in any way hindered by the idea that He is going to cause or allow the eternal suffering of most of His human creation, there’s great relief coming to you if you do this study.

Regardless of where you fall on the issue, feel free to contact me. Let’s talk about these verses down to the jot and tittle. And I’m not suggesting we “wrangle over words” as the Bible warns against. There is no mean-spiritedness here. We’re all sinners, saved by Grace, discussing our Lord’s word, so we can better know him,  And that’s my life goal. I want to know God more intimately, and make Him known to others.  As we love God more intimately, we’ll love one another in a more godly way. I confess to being somewhat guarded in this for far too long. And I’ve explained above much of the reason for that, But the last few months(*of 2015), as I’ve decided to throw tradition (and my doubts) to the wind, and just trust what Scripture reveals, have been amazing.  My love for God has grown, and in turn, my love for others has as well.  Prior to the study (and even since it, in those occasional times of doubt) I found it difficult to love a God who causes or allows eternal suffering.  And I don’t think we will love others any more than we love God.  But the study I’ve done by no means revealed God to be a soft cuddly teddy bear either.  He’s a lover of our souls, and a harsh judge to be feared and respected at the same time.  But He’s not a maniacal tormentor.  And that’s not just my opinion.  That’s what a deep and detailed study of this reveals.  I’ve not only carefully examined the 12 or so verses that have commonly been used to promote and prolong the traditional view of hell, but have studied the Bible from cover to cover and found that death, true death, a non-entity, loss of existence and being kind of death to be the ultimate wage of sin…and more specifically, the sin of faithless unbelief.

Lastly, I can’t state fervently enough that this is not an issue to break fellowship with other believers over. I’ve never attended a church that held anything but a traditional view of hell and immortality, and probably never will.  And as already stated, I continue to watch and listen to numerous programs, podcasts, and webcasts from Christian teachers and leaders who I respectfully disagree with, because I believe they are led by God and have valuable and life-giving messages, regardless of what I see as a fairly large mistake in a couple of their doctrines. We’re all flawed, all capable of some doctrinal error, and none of us is going to get every aspect of faith correct all the time, certainly not me.  So even if you go through this study and find the truth in it, don’t go looking for some congregation somewhere that believes this way about final judgment.  You won’t find it.  Let a new concept of God’s merciful nature grow your love for Jesus, and fill your own heart with a new level of love and mercy toward others.  If a new understanding of God’s nature in judgment doesn’t have that affect, then it’s worthless.  In Scripture, Paul talked about all the wonderful Christian attributes we might attain to, but said every one of them is essentially worthless if we don’t have love.  I don’t know how I read that passage all my life, and yet it only really sunk in recently.  When I first discovered what I believed to be error in the Church’s doctrine on final judgment, I was more angry at people who held strongly to the traditional view that was painting God in an unmerciful light, than I was relieved to be freed up to love God more intimately.  It’s taken a lot of growing up over the past several years to get beyond that, but thankfully it happened.  And I hope by sharing that, I can keep others who, like me, find the traditional teaching to be in error, from moving on in anger, and instead letting a new concept of God’s mercy translate into a new level of love and mercy toward others, regardless of our doctrinal differences.

Well, I’ve written of “the study” and “the book” as if they are out there and ready to go. They’re not. Biblicaljudgment.org contains a small percentage of the meat of the study that is essentially completed, but isn’t organized into something readable yet, and most everything there was written back in 2008 or before, and again, may have been written with a little more ill feelings toward those who maintain the traditional view of judgment.  I should probably just take that website down because this blog is essentially taking its place.   And the little info and evidence that is up on that website is in a very unedited, and sometimes lengthy tedious form.

But instead of beating around the bush for 9 more years waiting to one day finish a book on this, I’m going to begin putting the information from the study on pages and links within this blog.  Moving toward the end of September 2015 as I’m updating this post, I hope to have most of the key evidence I’ve found up and posted by the end of October.

I love to discuss this and other biblical issues. I welcome comments from those who agree with me, those who disagree with me, and those who just want more information. Please contact me or leave a comment.

God Bless

Daniel 12:1-2 “And at that time Michael shall stand up, the great ruler who stands for the sons of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation; until that time. And at that time your people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”

Although there are multiple references to various forms of judgment in the Old Testament, there are only two verses, out of over 27,000, that traditionalists believe solidly demonstrate eternal conscious suffering, and Daniel 12:2 is one of them. It actually does no such thing. This verse neither confirms nor denies eternal conscious suffering. There are two terms in the passage which are defined as “everlasting”. The first is the life that believers will be resurrected to. The second is the contempt. But who is feeling that contempt? God is. Strong’s Concordance defines the original word being translated as “contempt” as “abhorring”. Those who have rejected the call of God will always be an offense to Him, and they don’t need to continue to exist in order for their blasphemous rejection of the Holy Spirit to forever be with God. He said he’d forget our sin – the sin of those who have come to Him for forgiveness. But He can’t forget the sin of those who denied Him and wouldn’t repent from their unbelief.

So what about the “shame” mentioned there in verse two of Daniel chapter 12? That’s what the lost will feel when they are raised to stand judgment, which is what this passage is all about. While many of these were arrogant in their unbelief in life, there’s no room for that now. They know they are fully at fault, and they feel their due shame. There’s no place for contempt toward God on their part. So it can’t be argued that the “everlasting contempt” mentioned in this verse is what they’ll feel. That would be the opposite of the shame that the verse clearly says will be theirs. But notice that their shame is not described as everlasting. If it was, then I’d have to say this verse at least lends some credibility to the traditional stance. But it doesn’t. Their shame is the one thing in this verse which is not described as everlasting, and with good reason, since it will end when their very existence ends at the time they are cast into the lake of fire, which is in fact called “the second death”.

And just a sidenote that’s probably irrelevant…The raising of the saved to life, and the raising of the lost to stand judgment are actually separated by the 1000 year reign of Christ on earth, but Daniel didn’t have that revelation yet. That came from John, actually in the book of Revelation, many centuries later.

Overall, because the things described as everlasting in this passage are the life of the saved, and the feelings of God toward the lost, and these are contrasted with the shame of the lost, which is the one thing not described as everlasting, I’d say if anything, this verse is a clue that lends weight to the non-traditional argument. But I don’t want to be accused of the fallacy of “arguing from silence”, so at the very least, it’s fair to say that this verse in no way supports the idea that the lost are going to exist for all eternity.

I’m a Christian, but I don’t believe in eternal hell, and it’s not just some arbitrary decision based on my own preferences.  My preferences are irrelevant, as our yours, when it comes to Scripture.  It’s not a buffet, and we can’t just pick and choose what we’ll take and what we’ll reject from the bible.  It offers what it offers.  But I studied the topic deeply for close to a year from a strictly biblical standpoint, and have continued to study it steadily over the last 12 years, and remain convinced that those who reject God’s offer of salvation and eternal life will one day be destroyed out of existence, not kept alive and tormented throughout all eternity – still a harsh judgment, but not the sadistic purposeless judgment that we traditionally teach.

The thought of eternal hell always troubled me, but not in the way its proclamation is intended too…in the “Well, I certainly don’t want to go there. Please tell me how I can avoid that” kind of way.  But more in what it says about the God we’re to love with all our heart, soul, and mind, that He would consign masses of people who never asked to be born to conscious misery (and physical torture, according to many) for all eternity. I confess it – That seriously disturbed me for a long time, but I believed it, because I assumed the people teaching this had done the research.  I had no idea of the vast amount of biblical evidence to the contrary.

I don’t belong to a cult or any fringe sect of Christianity. I’m a fairly run-of-the-mill Christian, having attended a non-denominational Bible church for over a decade that constitutionally held to a belief in hell, that to me at least, is disturbing, and virtually non-existent scripturally, as I’ve come to believe through study.  And now I’m a member, and have been attending a Baptist church, where I assume the traditional view of eternal conscious torment is probably the widely held view among the members.  I should note that I absolutely love the church we now attend, and disagreeing on this issue is no reason not to worship and serve with others who happen to disagree on this.

But I’m not a Universalist.  Everyone will not be saved. In fact, Jesus seemed to make it clear that many more will be lost than will be saved. For those who will be lost, the bible states that there is a judgment day that occurs 1000 years after Christ has returned and reigned bodily on earth, and at that time of judgment, those who failed to put their faith in the one true living God will be raised to stand judgment, be found guilty of rejecting salvation, and be fully destroyed, body and soul. Based on Scripture, I don’t believe they will exist in any form after this point. They will not be suffering consciously for all eternity. To state it very simply, Before we were, we weren’t. There was a time we didn’t exist. God brings us into existence (an awesome gift), and then offers the opportunity to go on living forever at peace with our Maker, in timeless eternity (an unspeakably awesome gift). If we reject that, we’re essentially given back to what we were before God made us…we no longer exist. This second death is no soft punishment, but it’s the just punishment for unbelief. And it’s harsh and permanent(and yes, it is an “eternal punishment”), yet merciful at the same time, because the suffering of those who failed to find or accept grace does in fact have an end. (a quick sidenote: The time period between physical death and final punishment is much more of a gray area. There is scriptural evidence that the lost will experience conscious suffering during some or all of that time.  Many believe that the lost, as well as the saved, go into a soul sleep from the time of death until resurrection.  I personally see in Scripture evidence for sleep as well as consciousness (for the lost, and for the saved) between the time of physical death and resurrection, and instead of believing that either one or the other solely happen, I think it’s possible that both happen; like perhaps, there’s a time of consciousness immediately after death, and then we’re put into a sleep?  It’s certainly not something I’m dogmatic about.  I don’t think we’re meant to fully understand all that happens or doesn’t happen during that time.  But certainly I don’t reject the truth of Hell as a reality – I reject the doctrine of eternal conscious torment, and the belief that human life continues in any form, for the lost, after the second death in the lake of fire.  There is much disagreement, even among traditionalists, about what happens during this intermediate state, and it’s addressed in the study, but is not the primary focus.

If you’ve been a Christian long, then you may be calling back to memory a few verses that you believe would prove something much different than what I’ve stated. I’m  aware of those verses, having studied them extensively, and yet I maintain a belief that a total cessation of life, not a tormented eternity, is the final punishment for unbelief in Christ. I’m editing down the places in the book where I address those verses, and putting summaries of them over to your right under the heading “Summaries of Traditionalist proof texts”.  But if you’re brand new to this blog, please first read the “first time here” tab, and the “The Garden of Eden” tab to get a foundation.

I’m not going to go on and on about this here because I address it in other places, but I feel the need to say at this point, I have a great deal of respect for numerous pastors and Christian leaders who I happen to disagree with on the issue of eternal suffering and human immortality.  I don’t take it lightly, and it’s very uncomfortable to challenge those who have spoken into my life in many ways over the last 18 years that I’ve been seriously pursuing God, but from everything I’ve learned in doing this study, the challenge is needed. I don’t mean to undermine anyone’s ministry, and the concern that I might is one of several factors in why I’ve stalled so long on finishing the book or moving to promote the website and this blog. I could name a few unknown, and at least 20 well-known pastors or teachers who I continue to listen to and learn from daily or weekly, all of whom I respectfully disagree with on the matters of human souls being innately immortal, and hell being unending and timeless in nature.

I’ve also come to have a great deal of respect for those for whom this is not an issue at all.  I go back and forth on this in my head, but some days, I think – There’s not a thing wrong with trusting in God’s sovereignty in judgment, and trusting that if it means eternal conscious torment, and if that’s what it takes to satisfy God’s requirements, then that’s just what it takes.  That’s where most Christians are, and if one has never done a detailed study of judgment, there’s no reason to challenge the tradition that’s been handed down.  I never even thought about questioning the doctrine.  I was told by the pastors I was under all my life that hell was eternal, and that was that, like it or not.  But it was in trying to answer a question for a friend I was witnessing to that launched me accidentally into the study, that ultimately forced me to change my view on judgment.  So I’m sharing what I’ve learned, and I hope it helps someone else.  It brought great relief to my heart and soul, and grew my love for God exponentially.

Ultimately Satan is behind all lies and confusion. And I don’t kid myself at all. Writing this material that implies that close to 100% of my fellow-Christians have been deceived or have believed incorrectly isn’t going to go over well with a great percentage of them. I’ve already gotten a taste of it, and I know what’s headed my way if I keep pursuing this. And I realize that in the eyes of most, I’ll be the one seen as the satanically deceived and confused one.  And that’s ok.  I’m fallible, and certainly not beyond erring.  So I’m prepared for criticism. But that’s why the study, and being willing to walk through it is so important. If it’s flawed, then the Holy Spirit will reveal that to you, and then I welcome any insight you gain. But if you don’t find the flaws you’re expecting, it may change completely how you see and feel about our merciful Creator, as it did me.

The purpose of the book and this blog/website, are first to bring relief to Christians for whom the traditional view of hell has been a sticking point in their relationship with God or a hindrance to witnessing. It’s also an outreach to those who are rejecting the one true God because the traditional view of eternal conscious torment is repulsive to them. If you’re a person who has felt drawn to God, but who is denying Him because of doctrines like this, I hope the information I provide in the study will go a long way toward helping you make a decision for Christ.

A little background: After digging in deep to the subject of hell many years ago, and finding satisfying and biblical answers to my questions that virtually ruled out what I’d been taught my whole life…(that the lost will suffer endless torment, with the first billion years in tormenting skin-melting hell being just a drop in the eternal bucket), I was excited beyond belief, and I often studied and wrote into all hours of the night during those first few months. All my feelings toward God changed, knowing he wasn’t the maniacal soul tormenter that I’d been told of. I felt really good for the first time in a long time. And it wasn’t just the relief provided by the information I was finding, but it was realizing there was a real need here to get the information out, and that felt like a call or a purpose to me. I had always wanted to know what I was supposed to be doing with my life besides just the basic requirements of going back and forth to work to provide for my family, and this felt like the IT that I’d been searching for. I was on a cloud for a while, and began to share what I was finding, and ultimately shared it with the pastor of my church and other members of the church board that I subsequently stepped down from because my beliefs violated our church’s constitution. They were less excited. Ok, that’s an understatement. Some never responded. None responded positively. The only non-board member I shared it with at church then left our church because the board didn’t remove me as a Sunday School teacher. And a co-worker believes I’m doing the work of the devil. I handled those things well early on, but the cloud went dark, and it began to weigh me down. The only early pastoral support was from a friend’s pastor. He read some of the study I printed off for him, met with me for 2 hours about it, and told me I had shown him something he hadn’t seen before, and said that he believed this study had the potential to help a lot of people. But the little encouragement I received wasn’t enough to overpower the negatives, and I began to doubt the study. So I went back through all the information, and read back through the books that others have written that support the traditional view of hell I disagree with (Hell Under Fire, Two Views of Hell, etc). And once again, I found the arguments for a traditional view of hell and human immortality to have a lot of problems, and I became confident once more that I had found truth in my own study of God’s word.

Next, although I was fully convinced, I simply began to doubt the importance of it. I thought, “Ok, even if it’s true that God isn’t causing or allowing the eternal torment of the lost, perhaps that threat has pulled more people to Christ than it has repulsed away from Christ”. And even today, I do wonder if that’s why God has allowed the doctrine to remain, if it is in fact incorrect. He does weave our errors into His ultimate plans. It’s His specialty. Our errors are mostly all He has to work with, at the human level, being that we’re all sinners who make mistakes every day. But is there a point where it repulses more people than it draws? And if so, are we at that point?  Beyond the scriptural study, I read a lot about this topic on the internet, just to see how it affects people, and it’s not good.  People will leave their church, the mission field, and even their faith over this idea that God is consciously tormenting the lost for all eternity.

I’m going to be transparent here. Until just recently, the great feelings I had when I first began to discover the errors in the traditional view have never returned, except on fleeting little waves here and there. The last several years have been difficult on the spiritual level. Although I believe the study to be solid, and the evidence for a non-traditional view of final judgment overwhelming, I have existed in a cycle that takes me from one day, excited and ready to delve in and get the information out because “this needs to happen NOW”, to the next day, feeling like the scum of the earth because I’m at odds with Christian brothers and sisters everywhere…to then doubting the study…so then re-digging in and confirming what I know and not doubting the study…to again believing in the importance of the information…to then go on to feel like maybe it’s not all that important… and on and on the cycle goes. But the worst result is that for a long time I felt disconnected from other Christians because I know that my beliefs on this don’t line up with theirs. But the disconnection is less about the disagreement (we’re never going to agree on every issue of faith), but because I feel very strongly at times that it’s important to change what we, as the body of Christ, teach on this matter, and I know that it steps on the toes of people whose toes I don’t want to step on, when I move on this. Without wanting to or trying to, I’m inadvertently accusing Godly people of having been deceived and falling for Satanic lies, and I’m also implying that they’re continuing that work as well, in their own ministries. The very things that make me feel awful when it’s pointed at me, I’m doing to those I love, trust, and respect. So this has been beyond uncomfortable for years now, and that’s why this blog. I don’t know any other solution than to put the information out and see what the response is.  *But as I’m sitting here updating this 2013 post now in November of 2017, I can tell you that a whole new feeling of urgency has come over me with this.  The world is going dark quickly, and it seems that time to do anything effective for Christ is growing short.  I’m more in love with the Savior than I ever have been, and at the same time believe there is no better time to share this, and quit waffling on it and just stand firm for what I found Scripture to teach when I delved in and asked God for answers.  As the days grow darker, to anyone out there who is rejecting faith in God even partially because of the doctrine of eternal conscious torment, you can’t use that excuse any longer.  The bible simply doesn’t teach that and it’s easy to demonstrate this fact.  And to those who are Christians, but the closeness in your relationship to Christ has been in any way hindered by the idea that He is going to cause or allow the eternal suffering of most of His human creation, there’s great relief coming to you if you do this study.

Regardless of where you fall on the issue, feel free to contact me. Let’s talk about these verses in question. And I’m not suggesting we “wrangle over words” as the Bible warns against. There is no mean-spiritedness here. We’re all sinners, saved by Grace, discussing our Lord’s word, so we can better know him,  And that’s my life goal. I want to know God more intimately, and make Him known to others.  As we love God more intimately, we’ll love one another in a more godly way. I confess to being somewhat guarded in this for far too long. And I’ve explained above much of the reason for that, But the last couple years, as I’ve decided to throw tradition (and my doubts) to the wind, and just trust what Scripture reveals, have been amazing.  My love for God has grown, and in turn, my love for others has as well.  Prior to the study (and even since it, in those occasional times of doubt) I found it difficult to love a God who causes or allows eternal suffering.  And I don’t think we will love others any more than we love God.  But the study I’ve done by no means revealed God to be a soft cuddly teddy bear either.  He’s a lover of our souls, and a harsh judge to be feared and respected at the same time.  But He’s not a maniacal tormentor.  And that’s not just my opinion.  That’s what a deep and detailed study of this reveals.  I’ve not only carefully examined the 12 or so verses that have commonly been used to promote and prolong the traditional view of hell, but have studied the Bible from cover to cover and found that death, true death, a non-entity, loss of existence and being kind of death to be the ultimate wage of sin…and more specifically, the sin of faithless unbelief.

Lastly, I can’t state fervently enough that this is not an issue to break fellowship with other believers over. I’ve never attended a church that held anything but a traditional view of hell and immortality, and probably never will.  And as already stated, I continue to watch and listen to numerous programs, podcasts, and webcasts from Christian teachers and leaders who I respectfully disagree with, because I believe they are led by God and have valuable and life-giving messages, regardless of what I see as a fairly large mistake in a couple of their doctrines. We’re all flawed, all capable of some doctrinal error, and none of us is going to get every aspect of faith correct all the time, certainly not me.  So even if you go through this study and find the truth in it, don’t go looking for some congregation somewhere that believes this way about final judgment.  You won’t find it.  Let a new concept of God’s merciful nature grow your love for Jesus, and fill your own heart with a new level of love and mercy toward others.  If a new understanding of God’s nature in judgment doesn’t have that affect, then it’s worthless.  In Scripture, Paul talked about all the wonderful Christian attributes we might attain to, but said every one of them is essentially worthless if we don’t have love.  I don’t know how I read that passage all my life, and yet it only really sunk in recently.  When I first discovered what I believed to be error in the Church’s doctrine on final judgment, I was more angry at people who held strongly to the traditional view that was painting God in an unmerciful light, than I was relieved to be freed up to love God more intimately.  It’s taken a lot of growing up over the past several years to get beyond that, but thankfully it happened.  And I hope by sharing that, I can keep others who, like me, find the traditional teaching to be in error, from moving on in anger, and instead encourage them to let a new concept of God’s mercy translate into a new level of love and mercy toward others, regardless of our doctrinal differences.

I love to discuss this and other biblical issues. I welcome comments from those who agree with me, those who disagree with me, and those who just want more information. Please contact me or leave a comment.

God Bless You!

I hope this review of the most commonly used verses to maintain the traditional view has been helpful.  There are a couple other verses other than the 10 we’ve looked at in this section, which traditionalists believe imply or teach eternal conscious suffering.  And if you ever run into one that troubles you, feel free to contact me and we’ll discuss it.  I focused on these 10 though because they’re the ones which traditionalist writer Robert Peterson maintains are the “footings to the foundation” of the “house of traditionalism”.  To me, if these are the footings for that, then the foundation is doomed, and then whatever house you build on top of that….well, I’m scared to go inside because it’s coming down at some point – hopefully some point soon, because it’s offensive to the Lord, and it turns away many people who are seeking the Lord.  It also serves to confuse the believer about the merciful nature and character of God.

I think it’s important for those of us who have had the traditional view of eternal conscious suffering drilled into us almost from birth, to step back and realize something.  If it’s true, it should be easily verifiable in Scripture, not something that has to be painfully, and against all good biblical hermeneutics, strained out.  This is so important for us “lifers” to step back and realize: It’s not as if there’s some extra-biblical eternal hell reality out there, and thankfully we have Scripture to give us a few “descriptions of hell” (as I’ve heard many call these passages). No, it’s the other way around.  If it’s a legitimate doctrine-if there is an eternal conscious hell reality out there, then these verses which are claimed to prove and demonstrate it should do so beyond any reasonable doubt.  I hope that I’ve shown that they do no such thing, and that many of them actually lend more weight to the view of final judgment that I’ve landed on than they do to the traditional position.  I also believe I’ve shown ample evidence of the misuse of the Garden of Eden concepts which have been mistakenly used to teach that being a “living soul” means already possessing immortality.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and if you haven’t already, please click on the “Garden of Eden” tab above and read through the evidence there.  Our bodies are an object lesson for what’s going on at the soul level.  Just as our flesh is alive, but also headed for a date with death, so is our soul.  We are living souls, but we are dying souls, as well, headed for a date with destruction if we do not take the hand of salvation that God is reaching out to us.  I pray that if you’re reading this and have not yet accepted Christ as your Savior, that you’ll do that right now.  “Today is the day of salvation”.  God Bless!

There’s an Old Testament, as well as a New Testament reference to worms that cannot die and unquenchable fire and that’s what this final entry will address, in the order they appear in Scripture.

Isaiah 66:22-24

Isaiah 66:22 For as the new heavens and the new earth which I make stand before Me, declares Jehovah, so your seed and your name shall stand.

Isaiah 66:23 And it will be, from new moon to its new moon, and from sabbath to its sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before Me, says Jehovah.

Isaiah 66:24 And they shall go out and see the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against Me; for their worm shall not die, nor shall their fire be put out; and they shall be an object of disgust to all flesh.

I believe I’ve pointed the following out somewhere else in this blog, but with the Old Testament containing over 27,000 verses, traditionalists generally claim that a grand total of 2 of them speak specifically of eternal suffering in hell, and Isaiah 66:24 is one of them. I think this claim is a pretty big inadvertent accusation that God failed to properly warn people who existed before the New Testament was written, of the “true consequences” of faithlessness, if in fact the traditional view of hell is true. On the other hand, folks like myself believe that God has always given the same warning throughout Scripture, that ultimately, death(the second death from which there is no resurrection) awaits the unbelieving. But concerning this passage, Peterson (the most publicly outspoken Hell traditionalist) has demonstrated in his writings that he believes that v.22 gives us the timeline when it mentions the new earth and new heavens, which would place the timeline in eternity, beyond time, given that the old earth revolving in front of the Sun is what created time. But he has made a pretty big oversight. The Lord, through Isaiah, mentions the new heavens and new earth only in a simile that indicates how long believers will endure. V.22 has nothing to do with dating the passage. The timeline is actually set by all of the surrounding verses in this chapter. It is speaking of the time of the tribulation when the Lord will “slay many” according to v.16, and then the millennial reign of Christ on earth. We know this is happening on earth for a couple of reasons. For one, there are new moons and Sabbaths. A “new moon” is a calendar event – something that happens in time…not timelessness. There are not going to be any nights or moons in eternity when the Lord is our light, and these heavens have been consumed by fire(2 Pet 3:10 and Rev 20:11) and I sort of doubt the Jewish Sabbath will still be in practice throughout eternity, although I don’t know this. Secondly, the Lord says, in v.23, that “all flesh shall come to worship before me”. The way I understand it, we’re not going to be “fleshy” in heaven, after the millennial reign of Christ(1 Cor 15: 44,47,48), and we will be in the presence of the Lord continually in some fashion, and will not need to “come” to worship. Thirdly, v. 24 clearly says that these are dead bodies(not lost souls) that rebelled against God, and it says that when we go up(to Jerusalem, I presume) to worship the Lord, we will go out and see the dead bodies. Is this what we’re going to be doing in eternity – looking at dead bodies? I hope not. To me, it seems most likely that these are just the dead remains of those who rebelled in the tribulation, and most likely they are visible at the beginning of the 1000 year earthly reign of Christ(when we will still have a moon), until they are consumed by worms and fire(but their souls are in hell/Hades awaiting final judgment). And I believe there is somewhere else in Scripture that talks about how we are going to go up to worship the Lord yearly during the millennium, so this would fit well with that.

As far as the worms being undying, I don’t think for a minute that we are expected to believe that some new species of eternal indestructible worm is going to come into existence that will eat on these dead bodies. The worm not dying is just figurative language that indicates that some will be eaten by worms, and that that the lowly worm (not a Richard Scarry reference 🙂 will outlive those who rebelled against God, and also that ultimately there will not even be a physical remembrance of them. Concerning the unquenchable fire, the fire that consumes these bodies will not be quenched. It’s that simple. They will be consumed. We don’t need to assume that the fires never go out even though “unquenchable fire” has been twisted to mean this by many traditionalists. These are just dead bodies and they will eventually stop providing fuel for the fire when they are gone. Not only does the passage come right out and say these are “dead bodies”, it tells us in v. 24 that they shall be an object of disgust to “all flesh”. This is clearly an earthly event. Also, this concept of unquenchable fire appears in other places in the Bible and it never means fires that burn for eternity.

Jeremiah 17:27 “But if you do not listen to me, to keep the Sabbath day holy, and not to bear a burden and enter by the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in its gates, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem and shall not be quenched.”

I think this verse defines what happens when a fire will not be quenched: It devours.

Here’s another:

Ezekiel 20:45-48 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Son of man, let your face be turned to the south, let your words be dropped to the south, and be a prophet against the woodland of the South; And say to the woodland of the South, Give ear to the words of the Lord: this is what the Lord has said: See, I will have a fire lighted in you, for the destruction of every green tree in you and every dry tree: the flaming flame will not be put out, and all faces from the south to the north will be burned by it. And all flesh will see that I the Lord have had it lighted: it will not be put out. (italics for emphasis)

If this prophecy is about something that already happened, and I believe it is, then the fire “went out”, but was not “put out” or “quenched”. Also, it was lit for the purpose of “destruction”. Unquenchable doesn’t mean ever-burning. It just means that it is going to complete what God intended it to do, consume, without God or anyone else quenching it.

In the New Testament, the lost are compared to chaff that will be burned with “unquenchable fire”. Chaff is burned up to be gotten rid of, and I think that is why it is used figuratively to indicate the consumption and destruction of the lost, but traditionalists have used this verse too, to teach ever-burning flames. It’s difficult to understand why. If a fire “will not be quenched (put out)” then it is going to burn up whatever is in it.

Let’s jump to the New Testament reference and see if here we get any evidence for eternal conscious suffering in hell, as Peterson and the traditionalists claim…

Footing #5 Mark 9:44-48

Mark 9:44 where their worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched.

Mark 9:45 And if your foot offends you, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life lame than to have two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched

Mark 9:46 where their worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched.

Mark 9:47 And if your eye offends you, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes to be cast into hell(Gehenna) fire

Mark 9:48 where their worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched.

We basically covered this above. Again, I don’t think that we are expected to believe that there are going to be worms that possess immortality (or would it be imwormity?). Worms consume, and so does fire, especially if it is not quenched. This verse just speaks of the same destruction that Jesus always foretold for those who go down the broad path. I think this differs slightly though from Isaiah’s use of the same images in that Isaiah was predicting literal worms and earthly fire, whereas I believe Jesus is “borrowing” the thought(as if the Word wasn’t His to begin with) and using it more figuratively to describe the ultimate and total consumption of the soul in Gehenna, the Lake of Fire, the eternal punishment from which there is no return, just as something burned or eaten away cannot exist again.

A fire that is not quenched will finish its work of destruction.  That’s the idea here.  And worms are another picture of destruction.  I looked around Scripture for some examples and I thought of Jonah, who was sitting under that vine that had come up in one day, but then God sent the worm to destroy it.  The ultimate point of that story was God showing Jonah that his values were out of place because the prophet was more concerned for this plant that had come up in a day, and then died, than he was for the many souls in Ninevah who were going to be destroyed if they didn’t repent and turn from wickedness.  But for our purposes here, it’s a demonstration of the fact that worms destroy…even when it’s just one worm.

I found something interesting in Job as well.  In chapter 17 Job is announcing what he believes is his entry into death but he’s implying that his hope goes beyond Sheol (the grave, or the realm of the dead, and often translated ‘hell’).  We know in hindsight that the Lord was going to raise him up again, but at this point, he’s at rock bottom and is preparing mentally for death, but telling his “friends” that his hope is not in the grave.  But the way that relates to this post is that he mentions worms, and after figuratively calling Corruption his father, he calls “his worm” his mother and sister in 17:14.  I couldn’t help but notice it’s possessive (“his worm”, not just “a worm” or “worms”, just like when Jesus says “their worm” in the Mark passage we’re considering.  The NIV 2011 version even took out the possesive “their” and changed it to read “the worms that eat them will not die”.  Maybe that’s the general idea of what’s going on, but in the Greek, there’s a possessive there.

As with many traditionalist arguments for eternal conscious suffering, when the proof isn’t there, they resort to human reason and arguments, and instead of just letting Scripture interpret Scripture, various hypotheses are thrown out.  A common one I’ve heard, concerning this worm who will not die is that it’s the “worm of consciousness” that will eternally torment the lost.  That’s not in the bible.  In fact, I looked up every place that the word “worm” is used and here is everything that it ever represents: a worm, a man, mankind in general, and the House of Jacob, at least once.

Well I hope this helped in understanding the statements about unquenchable fire and undying worms.  If you have any comments or questions, please feel free.  God Bless

Matthew 25: 41-46

Mat 25:41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Mat 25:42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,

Mat 25:43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’

Mat 25:44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’

Mat 25:45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’

Mat 25:46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

In the longer version of this, I go fairly deep on some of the key words, digging up what various lexicons say about their meanings, but we really don’t need to do all that, especially in this abbreviated version.  The key things to address here are the “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” and then where those the Lord doesn’t know go away to “eternal punishment”.

On the surface, and again, with a preconceived notion that all souls are immortal, this seems like basic cut and dry evidence that proves the traditional view that the lost will be in a state of conscious punishment that goes on eternally.  But it simply isn’t that at all.  If you haven’t already, please begin with the “Garden of Eden” tab above, to see where the traditional theory about all souls being immortal and eternal, even without salvation, went wrong.  It’s a concocted theory, built on the shaky foundation of human reason, and anything else you build on top of it is therefore questionable as well.  With that in mind, let’s just look at what the statements are.

Fact: There was an eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

I’ve thought a lot about the omniscience of God, and since He knew that multitudes of human souls would also be cast into the lake of fire(and probably a higher percentage of humans than angels), why is it referred to as only having been “prepared for the devil and his angels” instead of for all who reject God’s salvation?  The best I’ve come up with so far, is just the timeline.  Although God knew from eternity past, that satan would fall, and that He would work that into His plan of testing and refining humanity, God also knew that satan’s time would be limited, so He prepared a destruction for him, so whether the eternal fire was created before, say, even humanity had been, or whether it’s just created in His mind for now and will become reality in the future, it is or was created because of the need to destroy satan and the fallen angels after God is finished punking them out….sorry….finished using them for His ultimate plans and purposes, is what I meant to write.

But it says it’s an “eternal” fire, so the destruction the fire causes must go on for all eternity, right?  Not at all, actually.  I touched on this in the analysis of the 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10 passage, but we’ll look a little deeper into it here.  That word being translated as eternal is the Greek word aionios and it is almost always translated into English as “eternal” or “everlasting”.  But I’ve looked up all the places where it is used, and if you just look at the context, it often takes on the meaning of “permanent”, or “have a permanent effect” more than an ongoing process or a state that never ends.  Here’s a few of those.  Actually instead of composing something new here, I’m going to cut and paste a section from the full-length book I’ve been writing on this subject:

The word appears 71 times in 69 verses in the New Testament and usually defines the unending life the Christian will experience in God’s presence, which will in fact be “everlasting” and “perpetual” in the sense that it has no end. But the word perpetual can lend itself to being defined as an unending process, and if we limit ourselves to that definition, it simply will not apply properly in every usage of aionios. The definition that seems to be missing from the sources I’ve checked is “permanence” and “an unchanging constancy”, and at least in one place it seems to mean “wholly effective”. So let’s go through some verses and see if these are not necessary definitions of “aionios”(or if they do not demand a more complete definition, given the contexts).

Let’s first look at a passage in Hebrews where the word is used three times.

Heb 9:12 Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.

Heb 9:13 For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh:

Heb 9:14 How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Heb 9:15 And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.

We see three things here that are described as being eternal(aionios): our redemption, the Spirit of God, and our inheritance. All three of these things are everlasting and permanent, not an ongoing process or a perpetual act, as people try to claim is meant when the same word is used to describe the punishment of the lost such as in Matthew 25:46. The traditionalist believes that because it is contrasted with eternal life in Matthew 25:46 that it must indicate something that is ongoing just as life is ongoing. They miss the point completely.  The unending life of the saved should be seen at the opposite end of the spectrum from the halted and permanently ended life of the unsaved.  It’s not that all, lost and saved, get an eternal existence, and we “need to choose where we want to spend it” (a common saying in church, which will never be found in Scripture).  It’s that one has gained an eternal life, and the other has purchased a permanent death.   That fact that this life that the believer is promised has eternal permanence is what makes it the awesome gift that it is. We had no existence in eternity past, yet we are created and offered eternal life that we cannot lose. The life of the saved is permanent. The death of the unsaved is permanent. Death is the punishment. The wages of sin is death. This couldn’t be plainer in scripture. Consider how the same Greek word aionios is used here in the passage from Hebrews 9. The clearest example of this is the first of the three usages. We are told in verse 12 that Jesus entered once into the holy place and obtained eternal(aionios) redemption for us. This is not an act that He must do perpetually or repeatedly. Once we are redeemed, we are redeemed. There is only one act of redemption and it happened in a moment, yet we will remain in the permanent state of being redeemed forever, just as the unsaved will remain in the permanent state of being dead forever.  Death is their permanent punishment.  Notice in verse 14 that Jesus did this work “through the eternal (aionios) Spirit”. Try plugging in “perpetual” in place of eternal and you will notice that it just doesn’t work. God is constant and unchanging and is the essence of permanence, and we need to leave room for that definition of aionios. Then notice in verse 15 that what we receive because of Christ’ death is the promise of an eternal (aionios) inheritence. The primary definition of the word being translated “inheritance” is “heirship” according to Strong’s. And heirship is a state, not a fluid, ongoing process. So when we see this word aionios, we need to consider the context and possibly apply a definition of something more static and permanent.

We find the word in many places in the Bible, mostly referring to eternal life or God’s attributes, but we also find it in Hebrews 6:2 describing judgment. The Greek word translated as “judgment” is “krima” which Strong’s defines as “a decision”, and this makes perfect sense with the meaning of aionios being permanent and everlasting and not an ongoing process. Final judgment is a decision that is permanent and unchanging, not a process that God will undertake for all eternity. That is in fact one of the most fearful things about it. The sentence the unsaved are assigned is eternal and that sentence is death. There is no resurrection from the Second Death. Just as when Christ comes the Second time it is permanent and lasting, so is the Second death permanent and lasting. And the decision is a one-time, for all-time, permanent decision from which there is no further turning.

The same word aionios is used in Jude 7 to describe the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah. Some of this will be repeat info if you’ve already read the Jude 7 summary above.  Verse 7 reads, “Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal(aionios) fire.”  If we are to believe, as the traditionalists do, that aionios means ongoing, then we would have to believe that Sodom and Gomorrah are still burning which clearly they are not. But they are utterly decimated. They suffered the vengeance of a Holy God and were permanently destroyed and were never rebuilt, and we are even told in the verse that this was done to serve as an example to us. Should we assume that it is an example of eternal torment in a permanent hell? I cannot see how. They were destroyed and consumed, and this is our example or sampling of what “eternal fire” will do, according to Jude. Their “eternal” fire didn’t burn forever but it caused a permanent(aionios) condition, and this is the “eternal fire” precursor to what Jesus is speaking of in Matthew 25 . In a singular act in time, the “eternal fire” was wholly and eternally effective.  What happened to Sodom and Gomorrah is past tense, as any example would have to be, yet it is said to be an example of what the vengeance of “eternal fire” does. The people and the cities were consumed down to nothing. We can “look” at what is not there, and know that this is an example of what eternal fire will do. These places were destroyed into nothingness. Nothing at all remains. With these two cities that no longer exist as our example, I can’t help but see the correlation with what the psalmist said in psalm 37:10: “For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.”

Continuing on with evidence that aionios has multiple meanings and applications, depending on context, Luke 16:9 says: And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting(aionios) habitations.

Here again we can see that aionios takes on the meaning of “permanence” rather than ongoing process or perpetual. And “everlasting habitation” implies a permanent dwelling.

2 Peter refers to the eternal(aionios) kingdom, Hebrews 13:20 refers to the everlasting covenant, and Hebrews 5:9 refers to our eternal (aionios) salvation. These are permanent promises and conditions, not perpetual, ongoing processes.

I could show more examples, but this should be sufficient to prove that eternal and everlasting, when translated from the Greek word aionios, do not necessarily refer to continual fluid processes such as a supposed process of destruction, and that they do in fact mean “permanent” and “wholly effective” in many places. In fact, I think it would be impossible to prove Biblically that destruction and perishing ever refer to an unending process. This is in fact what traditionalists claim, but where is the Biblical support? The only state ever described by the adjective aionios that could even possibly be referring to an ongoing process would be “life”, which it modifies a number of these 71 times the word occurs. And even when we consider those cases, it is very awkward, by using the same word aionios, to contrast and compare a life that never ends with an ongoing state of perishing or being destroyed. It seems far more likely, contextually, linguistically, and logically that Scripture is contrasting a life that you cannot lose with a death from which you can never return.

You’ve probably noticed this, but fire burns stuff up.  That’s likely why God uses it as the picture of ultimate destruction – because one simply can’t recover from it.  And again, it’s important to contrast “fire” in general(Greek: pur) with that singular flame (phlox) that we were looking at during the Luke 16 analysis.  That singular flame, which is the Holy Spirit, is a comforter to those whose faith is in Christ, and it is a tormentor to those who don’t yet know Him.  But whether it is comforting or tormenting, it isn’t the same type of destructive, obliterating fire that we see in this Matthew 24.  Different Greek words for those “fire”s and different English interpretations.

Concerning Jesus saying that the lost will go away to eternal punishment, this is a literal statement of fact, but it adds no weight to the traditional position of eternal CONSCIOUS suffering.  We need to remember what the punishment for faithlessness is, and it’s death, and as we looked at in the “garden of eden” tab above, death should not be getting redefined as “a miserable empty life, separated from God”.  This punishment will in fact be an eternal death.  There’s nothing implied here about lost souls suffering consciously forever.  Someone might ask: “Then why didn’t Jesus just say “eternal death” instead of “eternal punishment”?  Maybe to make us dig just barely beneath the surface to see if anyone is actually “studying to show themselves approved”, instead of going along with the company line that paints a picture of an almost monstrous god.  And I would flip that question back and ask, as I have a number of times in the book, and at least a couple on this blog site: “If eternal conscious suffering is the ultimate wage for sin, rather than an extinction level event on the individual soul(which is stated and implied numerous time in the bible), why wouldn’t we read that plainly stated even one time in Scripture?  Just once would be really awesome.  I mean, preachers say it all the time that no one really ever dies, it’s just a matter of location….eternity with God, or eternity separated from God.  It’s so easy for that to get spouted out there these days.  Why not during the inspiring and penning of the Word that everything we believe is based on?  Well it’s not there, because it’s not true.  And thousands of teachers and preachers repeating it for hundreds of years will never make it become true.  Make sure you’re on the right side on this one.  A lot is made of making sure you know WHY you believe WHAT you believe.  That’s a good thought, but take it a step further and make sure WHY you believe as you do is logical and Scriptural. I can believe that every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings, and I can believe this because “teacher says”, but that doesn’t make it true.  Well there’s always so much more I want to say, but I have to cut it somewhere, so I’ll